People desiring to use a telephony system, such as a person wanting to make a conference call, may undertake to attempt a practice session prior to actually making the scheduled call to the formal participants. As for example, an individual at a company may occasionally have a need to conduct a conference call where a number of other parties are to be joined on the conference call. If never having made such a call before, the person may, out of ignorance, not understand the complexities involved in making such call until actually attempting the call to the conference call parties. Such an event can result in multiple events of hanging-up on the call participants and potentially aggravating not only the person attempting to set-up the call, but the other participants may grow impatient or weary of being cut-off.
Accordingly, people desiring to make a proper conference call will often either ask somebody else for assistance, or alternatively, they will attempt to practice setting-up a conference call. Such attempts to practice may, for example, entail using a person's own cell phone as a test phone, and/or asking one or more co-workers or friends to act as test subjects while the person attempting the call operates the phone to connect the various test subjects. Such attempts are often time consuming to numerous individuals, and may still leave the person attempting the call with only the most minimum level of confidence in properly connecting the parties.
Furthermore, even slightly more sophisticated calling features may be completely out of the realm of consideration by the person attempting the call. For example, telephony system features that allow the ability to drop and add callers, place a sub-conference call, place a call in whisper mode, and other such features may be all but useless because the user has never had the opportunity to properly practice such features.
The prior art includes voice mail systems wherein a caller is directed to a voice mail box and is able to key entries into the phone for options, such as listening to the system replay the caller's message before sending the message to the receiving party. In addition, the prior art includes interactive voice response systems, wherein the caller is prompted to say a word or phrase, and then the system analyzes the caller's statement and moves forward with providing information to the caller or prompting the caller for further additional voice information. Such systems are commonly used in the airline industry and allow the caller to check departure and arrival times. However, such systems fail to allow a person to interact with the telephony system to practice the various features of the system.
Accordingly, there is a need for a telephony trainer and exerciser system that allows a person desiring to make a call to practice using the telephony system. In addition, there is a need for a telephony trainer and exerciser system that offers interactive responses from the test subjects so that the caller can conduct a meaningful practice session. In addition, there is a need for a telephony trainer and exerciser system that provides a transcript so that the person practicing the call can understand the nature of the practice session from the test subject's perspective and assess whether the practice call was professionally performed. In addition, there is a need for a coaching function that provides instruction to a user of the telephony system.